In New York and Los Angeles, two cultural epicentres of the United States, billboards with cryptic messages regarding regulating the internet were erected anonymously. In the first week of October, several billboards in each city featured a plain grey background with unsettling quotes in solid black writing stating th
After the billboards had been posteings like, “Artists need to play by the rules” and “Your data should belong to the NSA”. The billboards were both shocking and confusing, because they relayed a sentiment that has very recently become a controversial topic for discussion in the U.S.for a week, in the middle of the night when no one would notice, they were changed to reflect the exact opposite of what they said before. For example, the billboard that said, “Your data should belong to the NSA” was changed so that it read “Your data should belong to YOU”. Such altercation to the billboards is a simplification of the trend that the internet has adopted over its own lifespan.
While the rate of improvement in technology has been rapidly increasing in the past decades, the consumer of the internet has been looking for ways to hold onto their savings due to the instability of the economy. Bit Torrent’s first set of billboards reflect the intuition employed when the internet first launched, but the second set mirrors the convenient ways for us consumers to transfer files online with ease. The controversy created by this marketing strategy is understandable, but ultimately the company is successful in this campaign because it strikes to the daily goals of the average day consumers: To save money where ever possible without giving up the very things that keeps us sane.